These insects have been noticed by various travellers in different parts of the torrid zone; where numerous, as is the case with all equinoctial continents, and islands not fully cultivated, many persons have been excited by curiosity to observe them; and, indeed, those devoid of that disposition must have been very fortunate, if, after a short residence, they were not compelled to pay them attention for the preservation of their property. They make their approaches chiefly under ground, descending below the foundations of houses and stores, at several feet from the surface, and rising again either in the floors, or entering at the bottoms of the posts of which the sides of the buildings are composed, boring quite through them, following the course of the fibres to the top, or making lateral perforations and cavities here and there as they proceed. While some are employed in gutting the posts, others ascend from them, entering a rafter, or some other part of the roof. If they once find the thatch, which seems to be a favourite food, they soon bring up wet clay, and build their pipes or galleries through the roof in various directions, as long as it will support them; sometimes eating the palm-tree leaves and branches of which it is composed, and perhaps, for variety seems very pleasing to them, the rattan, or other running plant, which is used as a cord to tie the various parts of the roof together, and that to the posts which support it. Thus, with the assistance of the rats, who during the rainy season are apt to shelter themselves there, and to burrow through it, they very soon ruin the house, by weakening the fastenings, and exposing it to the wet. In the mean time the posts will be perforated in every direction as full of holes as that timber in the bottoms of ships, which has been bored by the worms; the fibrous and knotty parts, which are the hardest, being left to the last.